Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1329

There are no words...

My son, who needs serious professional help, put that on his Facebook page.

Pray for him.

If God Doesn't Show up, We're Dead

Sherry Weddell is talking about the numerous well-documented cases of people being raised from the dead by the power of Christ. A suitable topic for discussion for Easter week.

Raising the dead is what separates the men from the boys.

I love Frank Weathers!

The guy just gets it. Here he is, talking about teaching his family to pray and leading by example.

God send us a million more like him.

Cardinal Burke to Keynote upcoming conference on Catholic Care of the Disabled and Dying

St. Gianna Physician's Guild does good work.

John Farrell Interviews Sir Christopher Lee

I'm sitting here basking in the reflected glory of having somebody I know talking to Saruman. Cooler than three degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.

Hank Green...

has a plan for decreasing the suck and increasing the awesome.



He also really really loves NASA:



Meanwhile, he equally nerdy brother, John, knows more than anybody ever needed to know about Famous Last Words:

Peggy Bowes...

...has St. Zita in her kitchen.

I have Cardinal Newman, Mother Mary, and an icon of Our Lord watching over me as I write. Writing is lonely work for an extrovert like me, so it's nice to have them (and youse guys) around to keep me company.

Another Easter Victory--in Hungary!

A reader writes:

Some good news out of Europe, Hungary just adopted a new constitution protecting marriage and the right to life from conception on.

Some key bits from the Constitution:

We are proud that one thousand years ago our king, Saint Stephen, based the Hungarian State on solid foundations, and made our country a part of Christian Europe.

We acknowledge the role Christianity has played in preserving our nation. We respect all our country's religious traditions.

Article K

(1) Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage, understood to be the conjugal union of a man and a woman based on their independent consent; Hungary shall also protect the institution of the family, which it recognises as the basis for survival of the nation.
(2) Hungary shall promote the commitment to have and raise children.


Article II

Human dignity shall be inviolable. Everyone shall have the right to life and human dignity; the life of the foetus shall be protected from the moment of conception.

Lovely to see!

A reader writes:

I just wanted to ask you as a convert to Catholicism, what do you think when you meet a person/people especially cradle Catholics, who say "I am Catholic, but I don't believe this teaching or that teaching?" I have been in "controversy" with members of my family who say they are Catholic but espouse "cafeterianism". Thanks for any input.

I think this.

That said, I should also note that the phenomenon of Cafeteria Catholicism is by no means an affliction limited only to cradle Catholics. We converts have our blinkers as well and are quite as ready to amend the Faith to suit our political tribal allegiances as any cradle Catholic who has never given much thought to the Faith beyond regarding it as a sort of ethnicity. Chesterton remarked that the Faith is the only thing that saves a person from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age. But that, of course, is only true when we want to be saved from that degrading slavery. I suspect we all have places in our lives where we'd just as soon the Faith left us alone and stopped challenging cherished and comforting assumptions.

Praise Report

Today's bit of Easter Victory comes from Fr. Rob Johansen, who passed his exam with flying colors, thanks to your prayers, the grace of God, and his giant pulsating brain of theological knowledge.

Yay! Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus!